Not a huge fan of cooked WinMo ROMs, but desperately want in on that 850MHz action for your Touch Diamond? Well, first of all, anyone who isn't a fan of cooked ROMs is just a little loony as far as we're concerned (but we still love you); secondly, HTC's made it possible to have your cake and eat it too with a new firmware update posted to its Asian site that proclaims the addition of GSM 850 support among several other changes and fixes -- some ten in total. After working through some confusion over the appearance (or lack thereof) of 850 in the band selection screen after updating, it looks like this does actually work for a variety of Touch Diamonds floating around out there, so let us know how you fare if you decide to give it a shot.

[Via xda-developers, thanks Dayne]

We'd given up any hope of the Touch Diamonds out in the field ever being completely function on North American networks; the lack of 3G sucks enough as it is, but the mysterious absence of GSM 850 was the final slap in the face. xda-developers has taken its usual no-mountain-too-high approach, though, and has somehow managed to uncover and enable GSM 850 capability lying dormant in the Touch Diamond's circuitry. Granted, you'll still be poking along at EDGE speeds at best, but at least you'll be doing so in a wider swath of the colonies.

[Via wmpoweruser.com]

Not that we'd view the actual Touch Diamond as IF or anything, but the Diamond J6 is more along the lines of I3. In all seriousness, this thing isn't too far from being spot-on identical (maybe it's an HTC thing?), with a 2.8-inch display, built-in camera, multimedia player, Bluetooth and a microSD card slot. And for $160, we're almost inclined to fall in love here... almost.

Well, looky here! Not happy with the Touch Dual or Touch Pro, you saucy CDMA lovers, you? Try this one on for size then: the last piece in HTC's EV-DO puzzle for 2008 has now hit the FCC, the Touch Diamond -- and though only Telus has managed to announce it so far, we're feeling good about plenty of other carriers on the CDMA train recognizing the importance of this device and signing on before too long. We see test reports for WiFi, too, though we imagine it'll be at carriers' discretion to disable it if they're so inclined. Let's get a move on, Sprint. You too, Verizon, don't think we don't see you whistling over there in the corner.

As slick as TouchFLO 3D looks on the Touch Diamond (especially on that VGA display), users don't have much capability to fiddle with the way it looks and acts out of the box, and for the anal among us, that can be a huge hassle. A member of German forum PPC-Welt is doing what he can to ease the pain, though, releasing a "Diamond TF3D Config" utility for changing the order and visibility of tabs and modifying the way the date is displayed on the home screen. Not a huge deal by any means, but it's a step in the right direction -- and let's be honest, it's something dead simple that HTC should've had the forethought to include up front.

[Via the::unwired]

The Touch Diamond's controversial rear-end styling not bold enough for you? Well, that's an easy fix, mate -- just make it stick out a little bit more. HTC has now detailed an extended battery kit for the Touch Diamond which includes a 1340mAh pack (up from 900mAh out of the box) and a larger battery cover to help you contain all that go-juice. Looks like it's still on pre-order at this point, but once it pops, it'll run £40.95 (about $81).

[Via MoDaCo, thanks Ward]

At this point, neither the HTC Touch Diamond nor the Samsung i900 Omnia need any introduction, but we're happy to announce that these two have stepped into the squared circle and faced off in an epic nine-page battle. Reviewers manhandled both phones for an extended time and broke down the UI, hardware, features and overall usability, so if that sounds like something you'd be interested in, cover your face and head on down to the read link. We're warning you though, it gets ugly.

[Thanks, Chavdar]

Though the Sprint version is the most well-scooped CDMA variant thus far, Telus is actually becoming the first carrier 'round these parts to announce the Touch Diamond imbued with a little EV-DO for your data-consumption pleasure. The phone will run $149.99 CAD (which is just about a wash in US dollars) on a three-year contract, accompanied by data plans ranging from $15 for email and instant messaging to $30 for email, IM, and web browsing. Sprint, Verizon, we anxiously await your press releases.

Right, so it's not like we didn't know a CDMA version of HTC's hotly anticipated Touch Diamond was headed to Sprint, but who can honestly argue with in the wild photos proving that said assumption is true? What we have here is a bona fide Diamond in Sprint garb, although eagle-eyed readers will likely notice the mildly tweaked TouchFLO interface (which reeks of Bold there at the bottom, no?). At any rate, you can peek one more (blurry, of course) image of this bugger in the read link.

Sluggish Touch Diamond performance got you down? We can think of at least a few Americans that wish they had to worry about it, but HTC's infinite wisdom in leaving out GSM 850 and HSDPA 850 / 1900 leaves that crowd with bigger problems on its hands. The rest of you, though, might want to have a look at one of the latest fruits to fall out of the xda-developer tree -- the "Elite 1.0" ROM image for the Touch Diamond, featuring a handful of tweaks to streamline things (Welcome Center gets the boot, for instance), enabled HSUPA, and a newer version of the .NET Compact Framework that allegedly all but solves the crappy performance some owners and reviewers have been complaining about. This is about as unofficial as it gets, of course, so proceed with your own risk.

Separately, it seems that Touch Diamonds now hitting shops should be loaded with a slightly newer official ROM than the build passed around on the first batch of review units, and Coolsmartphone reports that it's faster. Not quite as streamlined as the Elite ROM seems to be, but hey, if you prefer to roll on the straight and narrow, it sounds like HTC has you covered.

[Thanks, Aaron K.]

Read - Elite ROM thread on xda-developers
Read - Newer official ROM?

Oh, snap. Just the other day we were bemoaning the fact that the Touch Diamond sent to us courtesy of HTC lacked both HSDPA 850 / 1900 and GSM 850, but according to the product page at CompUSA, the version it's selling has all of those. Yep, a purported quad-band Touch Diamond is seemingly in stock right now for Americans willing to part with $779.99, but remember, all those bills nets you a 2.8-inch VGA display, HSDPA 7.2, Windows Mobile 6.1 and oodles of sexy. Go on, help HTC get one closer to two million this year.

[Thanks, Tom]

Update: Hey look, UKers can get in too. Just £463.99 including VAT. Thanks Leigh!

Update 2: For shame! HTC just pinged us and said this thing is the same as every other Touch Diamond, meaning that North American 3G is not supported.

Sure, we may have run the HTC Touch Diamond into the ground in recent memory, but seeing as we're not remorseful bunch, here's a bit more. Vodafone's business shop has dropped the Touch Diamond on its pages, tangible proof that a real carrier launch is just around the corner. While still slated as coming soon, we now know it will be priced from £free and they're even throwing in a free Bluetooth car kit. Good on ya Vodafone, now hurry up already, we're awful tired of waiting.

[Via CoolSmartPhone]

We thought you'd like to see how the new iPhone 3G stacks up against the ol' EDGE-based iPhone, Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1, and HTC Touch Diamond and Touch Pro handsets. To QWERTY or not to QWERTY, that is the QWEstion.

The good folks at HTC left this little gem (pun totally intended) on our doorstep today, but as cool as it sounds to have one of the world's great Windows Mobile torchbearers just drop off its hottest new handset to us like it's an extra large pepperoni and mushroom, it's a bittersweet gift at best. Why? The Touch Diamond lacks both HSDPA 850 / 1900 and GSM 850 in its current incarnation, leaving it to cling to what 1900MHz EDGE towers it can find. That makes it an untouchable product for all but the hardest-core North Americans who are willing to throw both high-speed data and maximum signal coverage out of the window just to be able to put the pinnacle of WinMo 6.1 engineering in their pocket.